I have some students that are starting to swear in school. Do any of you have a list of Spanish swear words or words that are unacceptable? How much of a problem is it elsewhere? I don't even want them to be swearing when they're talking to the computer, not just at other people.

In Greenland, it was accepted that the high school students would swear in English. Even the Danish teachers swore in English and said it was because it was easier and the words seem more effective because they were short and powerful.

I had difficulty with it though and asked that they not swear in front of the "old lady" or older tourists. I demonstrated by using a Japanese word, Pickachu, who is a small cartoon character in Japan, but which happens to be a swear word in Greenlandic. They were thorougly shocked that I would use such a word and understood how I felt about the English words, so most of them stopped.

Otherwise I just made fun of the words if they said them. I showed the Danish teachers their dictionary in Danish with thousands of "good" swear words.

You can also use to the words as a launching pad to discover how to spell other words in the same family.

I used to put up other words and phrases they could use in situations they wanted to express anger, frustration, annoyance and so on. We had a word wall we could point to that would give the alternatives.

Thank you for the site. One of the students has been here for two and a half years, and this hasn't been a problem. The other two are new to the district. I don't want to use these words to help teach spelling, because that would seem like I condone this behavior. We did have one conversation where we talked about these, and in order to have a party in study hall, they can't use 'groserias' in either language. The next day, the students reviewed the rules to get the party, and on language they said the words again. Then I said that if they used the words again, they'd get an infraction, which is the whole grade's merit system. If they get too many infractions, they don't earn a trip to the bowling alley a block or two away from school. That stopped it. The other rules for a party are things like 'focus on homework until it's done' and 'I will come to study hall with everything I need- pencil or pen, textbook, and assignment'.